RSS Feed Sign-Up

Yeah this one is over. It wasnt a good year. However, I really believe that you get tested at just the right level you are at - kind of a cosmic thing. You build up experiences at your current level which helps you face harder times down the line. That's what 2012 felt like to me and that's why I'm using a Springsteen song to sum it up.

Usually I reserve my loudest off-key singing at a Springsteen concert for Born to Run or Badlands. Not this year. It turned out to be Wrecking Ball a song originally written to memoralize the old Giants Stadium. I noticed it subtlety show to show. Then the words started speaking to me as the year went on as we took one blow after another. Even started playing the album at the start of most work days.

Work World 2012

I've seen champions come and go. So if you got the guts mister, yeah, if you got the ballsIf you think it's your time, then step to the line, and bring on your wrecking ball

2012 started off really really badly. Most of my political worked rested on Michele Bachmann's run for the Republican nomination that ended in Iowa in January. It wasnt like I didnt see that coming. I started working on her campaign for congress for the 2010 race and helped her win the Iowa Straw poll but everything unraveled after that. Once you lose a candidate in a primary season, you are (at least on the Republican side) done for the Presidential election and even though it was for the better, it still is a tough pill to swallow after running Senator McCain's Presidential digital advertising.

I thought I still had one of my longest running clients, but either Mitt Romney or a senior staff member (I know who it is) had my fired from running digital for the RNC even though we as an agency were doing awesome work. They were a favorite client. In fact, Jacob helped re-tag all of their click through links in Google, campaign by campaign during bring your child to work day. So by June 2012 it looked like a really bad ending was in store, but I had a ton of non-Political clients come through which is awesome and the political clients
picked up, so guess what, 2012 ended on a good note and I feel excited heading into 2013.

Eric's Health World 2012

And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust. When the game has been decided and we're burning down the clock. And all our little victories and glories have turned into parking lots. When your best hopes and desires are scattered through the wind.

Like a lot of married with kids guys that work at home, I had a hard time keeping weight off. And with the occasional binge eating that I've been known for, I wasnt the picture of good health but with my first diverticulitis attack in 2011 I stayed away from certain foods and loaded up with fiber. Yeah that helped for a while until the middle of May and the pain returned; it didn't go away. I was on antibiotics from May until the end of July. I had a PICC line in my arm for the month of July. I couldnt drink alcohol. I couldnt eat red meat. I couldnt eat anything with significant fiber. No fresh fruits. No fresh vegetables. No pool. No exercise. No fun. 3 separate hospital stays totalling 15 days. Our big vacation for the year in Spain was cancelled (yeah we had trip insurance). It ended with colon surgery.

But I dropped 30+ pounds. I started running again. I've gotten up to 6+ miles at a clip and I signed up for a run in Disney World in May. Most weeks I run around 25 miles. I cut down on red meat to no more than 2 meals per week. I dont drink as much. I feel good. I turned a bad situation into a good one.

Family 2012 Recap

And hard times come, and hard times go And hard times come, and hard times go And hard times come, and hard times go And hard times come, and hard times go And hard times come, and hard times go Yeah just to come again

It was a hard year. Cancer that didn't go away. In laws that were in and out of the hospital. Jacob had a leg injury that kept him out of soccer for 5-6 weeks. There was one point where Mary was in St. Claire's Hospital because her kidneys were blocked and I ended up in Morristown with a serious diverticulitis attack. Yeah not kidding - 2 separate hospitals at the same time. As I wrote above, we didn't make it to Spain so I ruined Jacob's chance to play overseas but it was for the better, because, well, I could have been in a serious state with a colostomy bag.

However, as usual we rolled with the punches although they definitely hurt this year. We had a good time down the Jersey Shore and an awesome trip in Disney World (as usual). The kids dont even seem to remember that the Spain trip was cancelled. Perhaps the 6 nights we saw Springsteen, three of them right against the stage in the pit, helped us, well maybe they helped me. The Giants delivered a Super Bowl and we celebrated with them by going to the parade in NYC AND the celebration at Giants Stadium.

You know what also helped me? I read and analyze the Torah every week. I probably study once per day. It's good to get your brain working on something else.
It's good to read about biblical challenges because maybe your challenges arent so great.

Running also helps. Not just physically but mentally. When you start running again, you are slow and cant run far, but if you keep going, you can build up strength and endurance. When are you going for a 50 minute run, you need to schedule it, keep it high priority, and realize that 50 minutes isnt that long. That is good planning advice.

It's good to have friends. It's good to have family. It's good to have people around you. You learn who you can count on.

We have a big Bar Mitzvah coming up. Other than that I don't have high expectations for 2013. I'm just hoping for a good healthy year. So raise up your glasses and let me hear your voices call. Because tonight all the dead are here, so bring on your wrecking ball.

Since the start of this political season, the rage among a lot of online political advertisers is buying online ads using matched voter file (that's taking the an email file and matching them with a publisher). Nearly every ad buy I put together usually ends up with a discussion whether I want to use voter file matched cookies which I answer with umm no. Why would I want to use that garbage? Their answer is, well, the CPMs are only 20% higher plus you know that you are targeting known Republicans, plus everyone else is doing it. I don't buy that everyone is doing it, but...

My answer is still no. Waste of money. Waste of time, plus SURPRISE I have more experience with political online ad buying, especially voter file marketing. It's nothing new.

Now before I continue my bash let me explain that I have nothing against companies that supply the data to match, nor do I have any issue with Facebook's new marketing (I'm bullish on that). I do think there is demand from newer political online marketers who only want to target known Republicans because that's how they've been doing it in direct mail since 1975. Anyway, here's why it is foolish.

I started doing political advertising back in 2006. Back then, we supplied AOL and Yahoo with Republican voter files. I never successfully completed a match with MSN because they were too slow and required too much of either an upfront fee OR a large guaranteed ad buy. We used voter file marketing for McCain's Presidential run.

The CPMs were higher and the results, well, let's just say that the results were not 20% better. In fact, I got better results with running Google Display Ads fired off via keywords than any data file match. So, it was a waste of money and certainly my time when I'd rather focus on content where my ads appeared. Of course by 2012 with so many new targeting networks people have forgotten what worked or didn't work in the past. So, if I don't like voter file marketing, what do I like doing:

ERIC'S FAVORITE 1:1 MARKETING TECHNIQUES IN 2012

Build your own retargeting audience in Google or AdRoll. Yes build your own. People that click on your ads, visit your website, donate, etc. You know what? Other than the money it costs to run ads, it's free to build your audience.

Build your own voter file targeting in FB. Load up your own email list to FB and let FB anonymously match your files and build an audience for you. Why is this better than the big voter file match? It's YOUR OWN LIST and it's free.

Email marketing (yeah that still works real well)

Google Search - why? These are people looking for your message or YOU.

Content Targeting - match your choice keywords with content so your ads appear when the content makes sense. You know why that works? Because it is cost effective.

Facebook interest targeting - it's the best out there and cheap.

A pure voter file marketing campaign is the last thing I'd buy. If I had branding dollars, I'd move to partners like Twitter, Pandora, Hulu, and YouTube before I'd spend a dime on a pure voter file buy.

Is voter file marketing all the rage? I don't care and neither should you.

I don't get it. Your Facebook advertising is awful. It's almost like you are 18 years old and just started reading a marketing 101 book. Or worse yet. You are robbing your clients blind with high agency fees.

Yes, Google Advertising is hard. It requires logical campaign design, optimization, and an understanding of search. Perhaps you've given up with Google or your clients figured out you don't know anything.

Facebook isn't hard. It's actually very intuitive and very easy to use. Yes you can setup multiple campaigns and multiple ads. You can use some bid management help, but at the end of the day, the platform is easy to microtarget people based on interest and demographics. So there's no reason for the following lousy political ads....

Elizabeth Warren (Democrat for Senate from Massachusetts): I live in NJ. I'm a registered Republican. Probably show up in the conservative bucket. I don't susbcribe to multiple political accounts. I should NOT be in your target.

George Allen (Republican running for Senate in Virginia): The ad targeting was good. I dont like the ad because it gave me the impression that his campaign is on life support...(snicker away)

Obama LGBT: Well the targeting is way off here. Wrong political category (for the most part), wrong Presidential candidate, and it is very easy to add in narrow interest targeting to find people in the LGBT target. However, not to be outdone, The Mitt Romney campaign (sorry) has the worst targeting

Now. I'm not a facebook fan of Mitt Romney. I was following him since 2008 but during the 2012 Primary I didn't want friends thinking I supported him, so I unliked him. Plus, I found the posts not very informative. They then hit me with a lot of ads which of course was the correct target. That was fine but they stopped.

So now, I get served individual ads based on potential microtargets. However, all of these microtargets are so easy to find, its inexcusable to not use them. And, Facebook has matured so that just getting likes is not that compelling + it's not very helpful for your strategy if someone is in multiple micro targets or coalitions.

Romney Hispanic Target: Umm, I don't like Romney and I'm not Hispanic. The Hispanic target is the ONLY broad match target under the Ethnics category. CHECK THE BOX.

Women for Romney: Listen folks, Facebook was founded to help Zuckerberg get a date. Use the gender targeting. Try using something more than just a friend of mine liking the page for your targeting.

Young Americans for Mitt: I'm 45. As young and immature as I like to be, I'm pretty sure 45 is not in the Young American target. Use the age targeting.

So to summarize, I've been served ads meant for women, young voters, Hispanic voters, LGBT, and out of state liberal/progressive ads. I can actually rationalize the Warren + Debbie Wasserman Schulz ads as testing into the active politics broad category but the rest of the lifestyle targeting by President Obama and especially Romney for President are just poor.

I havent seen any more poorly targeted Obama ads but the Romney ads just keep coming. It doesn't make any sense. If you really want to build up facebook coalitions, why not try to put the correct demos in your coalition. Sure maybe it costs you a little more money to add the demo, but doesn't that make the most sense to have the purest coalition as possible? It's easy, try it.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. By the way, The Obama Campaign is still serving LGBT ads. It's really a poor display of the lifestyle targeting available in Facebook and demonstrates that The Obama Campaign is not technologically savvy.

P.P.S Oh and not to be outdown by lousy facebook marketing, Romney is now targeting me with Hispanic versions of his ad. Really, hit the ethnic targeting. Its there and available.

Long time friends of mine know that I have a huge Amazing Spider-Man comic book collection. I am only missing 15 books - 9 of those are from the first 15 books. I do have my own copy of Amazing Fantasy 15 (the first appearance) show in this post. Now before I give a small review, here are a few parts of the movie that don't exist in the Spidey mythology...

1) Curt Connors does not work for Oscorp. He develops the serum on his own.

However, this movie is awesome. Even with those changes, the movie stays true to Spider-Man and I do like some of the changes especially with Oscorp and Norman Osborn being behind the scenes directing things. That part of Normal Osborn shows up many, many years later when Marvel decides to resurrect Norman after his death in Spider-Man #122.

The 3D effects are a lot of fun. I saw the Avengers a few days earlier and while I liked the Avengers, Spider-Man was 10 times better. Why? The reason I like Spider-Man so much is that he is just a nerdy high school kid that turns into something special but he still maintains all of the social issues that high school and college kids have. Also, Emma Stone is an awesome Gwen Stacy whom I always thought was the best girl friend for Peter Parker.

As a big Springsteen fan it is IMPOSSIBLE for another big fan to fall asleep. Even with what looks to me like crappy seats for Gov. Christie - I always go General Admission.

Bruce constructs his setlists with very few down times in the show and on this tour there are only two typical slow spots - Jack of All Trades and Rocky Ground. However, right after those songs Bruce picks it back up again so even if by some odd chance Gov. Christie kept his eyes closed a little too long while taking in the soulful Rocky Ground he would have jumped back up on the next song anyway. And, this was one picture taken at a moment of time, so sure anyone of us can look bad with a quick photo.

Did the Governor fall asleep? There is no chance but did he look asleep for what must have seemed like an eternity to the fan who snapped the bad picture? Sure it's possible but even at that point the Governor would have been on his feet when Bruce and the E Street Band pulled out Rosalita (the very next song).

Rocky Ground into Rosie? There is no way Chris Christie was sleeping at this Springsteen concert.

On April 13 I received an email from Edmunds.com. The email thanked me for subscribing to the Edmunds newsletter. I received it about 9:30 AM EST and I was a little upset. Sure it's easy to get my email and I get a ton of spam, but usually I just unsubscribe and move on. Not this time because most of the spam comes from unscrupulous types, not from a major brand. So I sprung into action.

First thing I did was hit the unsubscribe link thinking it might be a one click unsubscribe. If that link did the job the first time, I probably would have moved on. Unfortunately, Edmunds does not employ a one click unsubscribe. I had to get another email with a link to unsubscribe again. At that point I got a little upset and decided to let Edmunds know.

So I took to Facebook and Twitter. I really wasn't expecting too much other than a place to spread my displeasure with Edmunds quickly. However, they surprised me. They did have their social ears on and reached out to me in Twitter and Facebook very quickly.

A friend of mine who works at Twitter happened to call me that day and said "I found it very funny watching you take on Edmunds." Well as I explained to my friend and to Edmunds there were only two reasons for receiving that unwanted email subscription - a friend added me or Edmunds added me. It could not have been myself.

Well after some time and contacts with me via Facebook and Twitter it turned out that a few years ago I did signup for Edmunds but then unsubscribed. I dont remember why but it seemed that Edmunds added me and a bunch of other previously unsubscribes this past morning in error. Mystery solved....

However, Edmunds turned a bad situation into a decent resolution. I was hopping mad when I got that email in the morning and figured with my social reach I could let as many people as possible know they shouldnt trust Edmunds with their contact information. However, instead of sticking their head in the sand Edmunds reached out to me quickly and cooled off this hothead.

I still don't like their two step unsubscribe, but Edmunds definitely took my issue seriously and resolved it in a professional manner. Nicely done,

I just finished listening to Wrecking Ball from start to finish including the bonus tracks. It's an awesome CD and rivals The Rising as his best release since Born In The USA (yes I wrote that). To put that in perspective, my top 5 Springsteen official releases are Born to Run, Darkness on The Edge of Town, Greetings from Asbury Park, Nebraska, and The Rising. So for me to write it's about as good as The Rising puts my love for this CD in perspective.

Now long time readers know what I do with half my working day or so (sometimes more) and my politics. However, I think you need to put politics aside when you listen along unless you are as Bruce puts it "a fat cat on banker's hill". If you like Darkness and the message there about the working, the working, the working life than this is your Darkness on the Edge of Town 2.0. Anyway, onto the quick song reviews...

We Take Care of Our Own - you've heard it. I wasnt impressed when I first listened to it but this has grown on me. I moved it to a B.

Easy Money - This is an up tempo version of Meeting Across The River. Unlike Meeting you wont listen to it thinking, oh how soon is Jungleland coming...This is an A.

Shackled and Drawn - Best song on the release. It might be the best song since Maria's Bed and certainly is a top 10 since 1990. A++ if such a thing exists. If you dont listen to this song today over a dozen times, turn in your Springsteen fan card.

Jack of All Trades - It's a slow song and the first few times I wasnt impressed. However, this is Factory 2.0 and I'd give it a B+. You arent going to want to hear this live unless he changes the arrangement or maybe you do and use it to hit the bathroom or at least sit down. It's a great listen on the CD.

Death to My Hometown - This is an Irish drinking song or sounds like it should be. It's a warning to people to protect their own hometown or protect what matters to you. I'd give it an A

This Depression - It's hard to get excited about this song (see song title). It's a song about asking for help or support. The guitar solo in the song is worth the listen - it reminds me of Youngstown and you can see Nils soloing this on tour. I'll give it a B just because of the music.

Wrecking Ball - No matter what Bruce says about this song, Wrecking Ball is a dedication to Giants Stadium. He introduced it on the last concerts played at Giants Stadium and uses words to describe the stadium (wrecking ball, Meadowlands, Giants played their games). I'm cool with Bruce trying to repurpose it because the studio version of this song is great and a Wrecking Ball can be used to describe starting over and change or "the more things change, the more things stay the same". This song is an A. One more fact on this song I just noticed. The Big Man's sax is on this song.

You've Got It - It's not complicated. This is I'm Going Down 2.0. I love that song. I love this song. B+ (yeah it's not higher because, well, this is a simple song).

Rocky Ground - A lot of religious/Christian themes in this song. It's got great music. It's uplifting. It doesnt really remind me of any other Springsteen song - especially with the rap in the middle.....It's a solid B...I like it. It's not as good as other songs on the CD that's all.

Land of Hope and Dreams - It's been around forever. The studio version is great. It's an A song. When I hear it I see myself jumping up and down with Bruce towards the end of the song. My only disappointment is I've heard this song over and over again for almost 10 years....However, The Big Man lends his sax on this track..

We Are Alive - Ever wonder what the dead think about after they are dead? Well Bruce has heard them and tells you what they are thinking - no Ouija board needed. Its an awesome song. A.

Swallowed Up - It's a bonus song. It's no bonus. Skip it. Ignore it. Even the genius screws up every once in a while. I'm sure his European fan base will love it. I'm sure the Human Touch fan base will love it. Me? I'm hoping he doesnt it play it the three nights in NJ when I'm in the pit because I'm worried he might see my face... It's a F.

American Land - It's been around since the Seeger tour. The song rocks. It's about as American as you can get. The studio version is great. A++

Don't walk but run to dowload or purchase. This CD is awesome. Springsteen returns to his Darkness roots. So should you.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. One last note on Wrecking Ball. Unlike Springsteen songs in the past, the liner notes credit a bunch of other non-Springsteen songs for providing elements to Wrecking Ball songs. Interesting....

A few months back I wrote this post wondering if Newegg.com is running a scam. To recap the Newegg.com scam, someone got my wife's credit card number, address, and email and then ordered a $1000 camera lens. I contacted Newegg.com and yelled at everyone I could speak with regarding their terrible fraud protection. We received an email to setup a return which we did and when we shipped the item back to Newegg.com it was refused at Newegg.com's warehouse. So I worked with American Express and put a block on Newegg.com to prevent them, their scammers, the people who try to scam, and even us from ever putting a Newegg.com charge on our cards ever again. Amex did credit the scammed purchase.

Well you'd think after I wrote that story, Newegg.com would get their act together when it comes to people scamming them. Unfortunately, based on the comments on my original post, it's clear that Newegg.com doesn't care that there is a scam happening with their platform. I'd encourage people to just call their credit card company and place a block on Newegg.com so that no charges can be placed on your card from this subpar company.

You get a strange email from Newegg.com alerting you to the scam order. Of course you think it is scam so you probably ignore it or maybe you think it is a "gift"

Then the item shows up at your door which you open and to your surprise you are now the owner of some item you didnt order, but to your bank credit card, it looks like you actually bought the Newegg.com scam item.

You then call into Newegg.com to tell them you didnt order this. Of course to Newegg.com it looks like you did.

If you are smart and angry enough, you convince them it was the Newegg.com scam and you setup a return. They'll probably tell you that this item was the result of a scammer who got your card and was on their way to pick up the item at your house (don't believe Newegg.com but please call your local police).

You'll then setup the return, UPS will pick up the item and then about a week later you'll find the item at your house because it was denied acceptance by Newegg.com

Finally, at that point you'll be at the mercy of your credit card company. American Express agreed with me and reversed the charge. One of the commenters from my original Newegg.com scam post wrote that Wells Fargo agreed with Newegg.com and they are now fighting with Wells Fargo.

I wouldn't buy an item from Newegg.com. I wouldnt let a friend by from Newegg.com. I wouldn't ever let a charge from Newegg.com show up on a credit card. I'd put a block on my credit cards. If everyone did this, Newegg.com would finally take their scam problem seriously and actually do something about it. Read the comments on my original post. You'll see there are tons of people that have been impacted by the Newegg.com scam.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

UPDATE: I'M SHUTTING OFF COMMENTS. I DONT KNOW WHAT NEWEGG.COM IS DOING. I DONT ALLOW NEWEGG.COM TO MAKE ANY PURCHASES ON MY CARDS. I'D SUGGEST YOU DO THE SAME

*******I wrote this post in 2006, I think.....Wow, I was quite the author back then. I think with Google changing their privacy policy, I think this is an interesting post******

I lot of friends, including my wife, have said to me, "why are you so harsh on Google lately?" This kind of surprises me because I don't think I have been. Sure this is the third article I've written on Google as of late and you are probably wondering if I may dump blospot and pop over to Typepad instead.

Let me set the record straight. I love Google and the products that they bring to the marketplace. I also know a lot of people at Google and they are all great. Google also brings a ton of competition to the marketplace and, it didn't hurt that my former employer was part of the IPO group.

However, they are in it to make money, just like everyone else. Have you seen their stock price recently and their marketcap? It is outrageous. You know what else you need to learn about Google? How about their corporate mantra? Read #4 and #6. #4 is titled Democracy on the web works and #6 is You can make money without doing evil. Interesting huh? Let's see how democracy on the web and making money without doing evil has been forgotten or at least thrown out temporarily when it comes to making money.

Democracy on the webFirst, Google decides not to help the United States Government in understanding how existing filtering on the web protects children from porn and predators. It IS a primary part of a ruling on the COPA act. Now, they are the only ones from the Big 4 that stood up to the Government. Some people think that Google is standing up to the US to protect individual freedom and who knows, first this data and then they hand over PII information on individual's searches.

Last time I checked, the US Government, the best Democracy on the great blue spot in the Milky Way protects our individual rights and not Google. And, you know who basically asked for the check on the existing filtering technology - The Supreme Court. Now lets look at the other side of the spectrum - China.

China and Google - Perfect Together?

China - the last time I checked was Communist. You remember those people, right? They were pretty popular up until 1989 or so, when Reagan's pressures finally led to the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and only really left Cuba and China as strong Communist nations.

Fast forward to 2006 and everyone loves China now a days because you guessed it - a billion or so people buy a lot of goods; that is when their government allows them to make some money. You know what the Chinese still practice - good old government censorship.

Freedom of speech in China, the kind like we enjoy in the USA, does NOT exits. Hell, you can't even get a good search result without some form of censorship.

Now, Google decides to help the Chinese Government continue to oppress their people by making it easier to censor search results. No, not the Google. we can make money without doing evil company. Yes that Google; well maybe not the Google that originally wrote those words, but the Google that is now making a ton of money. Read this article from CNN entitled Google to Censor Itself.

I don't know about you, but when the same company decides to stiff the Democratic US Government in the name of freedom and then turns around and helps a Communist China continue their oppression, one has to wonder who we are dealing with. Maybe Google should re-read their Corporate Values Statement again and decide if they really want to make some money the free speech, democratic way which up until now has helped their stock grow from about $90 to $433.

Think I'm the only one that feels this way - check out Bambi's article over at CBS MarketWatch (require free registration) titled Google Shows Its True Colors . Again, makes you want to move your blog to Typepad.

My family just recently became weekend NJ Devils season ticket holders. We've also been long time NY Giants season ticket holders (I split the tickets with my Uncle). We are also Yankees fans and hit the occasional Somerset Patriots games. Plus, my son attends Red Bulls games with his friends and we watch the occasional Manchester United game on TV (yeah we like sports). One of the marketing strategies I've noticed is which teams and sports get social media and which ones don't. The Devils and the Giants get social media.

FIRST THE GIANTS

The Giants have a mobile app where they load up behind the scenes videos and articles which I enjoy reading and watching. They also really push using Twitter at the stadium and make regular in game updates on their Facebook page with pictures. One little known social outreach was before the Giants season finale versus the Cowboys, star quarterback Eli Manning made 500 calls to season ticket holders. How do I know this? My Uncle got one of those calls, picked up the phone, and found Eli Manning on the other end. Talk about luck. Eli was calling 500 fans to make sure everyone was loud at the stadium that weekend (my Uncle gave the tickets to a friend). They have one main problem which I'll talk about below.

THE NJ DEVILS

While the Giants are good at social media, the Devils are better. They still hand out iPads at the game to "get Social"and regular push Facebook at all of their games. They also encourage people to post pictures and tweet. The Devils have done a great job pushing their Facebook page. I havent found a mobile app (I dont think there is one) which I wish there was one to make it easier to read and share stories, but I know that takes some money to build one or an agreement with a provider. They have the same problem as the Giants, but one thing I did find annoying is that when you search for their FB page you have to make sure you type in "New Jersey Devils" and not "NJ Devils" to get the official page and to make it just a little more confusing the official page is listed as "Ticket Sales". I think a call into Facebook should help them fix it.

THE MAIN PROBLEM FOR GIANTS AND DEVILS

I think that both teams struggle to decide where their main information hub is. For the Giants it seems to be Twitter but that's not the best place; it should be Facebook. The Devils seem to be torn between their website where a lot of articles, videos, stories, schedule, and stats are stored and Facebook where people "get social". I find myself going between the two and I think that's suboptimal. Also, it would be awesome if there was a way for people to check into their seats similar to what's available in Ticketmaster for their games.

If I was advising the Devils, I'd make the leap into social even more. I bet other local team are taking notice, so they need to keep pushing the envelope. I don't think beefing up their Facebook page would be revolutionary enough. I'd recommend (and yes it costs money) a Facebook App similar to the infamous Washington Post app where it would post stories, post updates to the reader's FB page, and even let people check into game events. The Devils social team should also spend a lot of time understanding Facebook's newly released Open Graph to understand the actions they could be publishing.

With that bigger push and a new designed App, the Devils could keep pushing the social media sports envelope open even more and finally make the leap into minimizing the over reliance of their website as the main information hub.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. A little more advice is to take a look at FB ads especially the Sponsored Stories, Page Post Like and Page Like ad formats to help spread their messaging.

***Note: I wrote this post November 11, 2005. I thought it would be fun to repost. Any edits I made tonight will be crossed out so you can read what I originally wrote. Enjoy***

I was in New York on Monday and I ran into a friend that I haven't seen in a few years. The first words out of his mouth are "Eric you must be the most famous man on the internet". After what passes for blushing on my part, which doesn't amount to much of anything, I replied, "actually no, just good at a little self promotion and long term planning".

I worked for 10 years at AT&T and 5 years at Harrisdirect (the company formerly known as PCFN, DLJdirect, and CSFBdirect) and one of the key things I learned was you have to learn know how to build, manage, and plan for your self promotion, because at the end of the day, that's all you really have. A rumor I heard at AT&T led me to managing my self promotion, so here it is in its entirety.

When C.Michael Armstrong was named chairman and CEO of AT&T a Vice President walked into the PR department and said "make me an internet genius" and of course they did. This VP had AT&T's press machine in full press at his disposal and he ended up with plenty of speaking engagements, case studies, and press releases; even a few of these that he couldn't handle ended up on my desk. After a few short months, this VP becomes AT&T's internet czar.

So armed with this knowledge when I leave left AT&T, I look for my own self promotion opportunities while at the company formerly known as Harrisdirect. Besides a little self glory, it helps with my own position as VP of Online Advertising Managing Director Channel Marketing because there is nothing better than generating a little free press for your employer while building your own reputation and getting good advertising rates.

While negotiating media deals, I notice that several publishers were willing to go beyond what I should be receiving based on my spend if offered to participate in case studies with them. I said "sure, but with one condition, my name is in the case study".

So, when you hit the link on the right for My Google News you can see the list of case studies, magazine articles, and press releases that I've participated in since 2002. All this with a little planning, quid pro quo, and an eye to the future. Oh by the way, never, never, do this without your own PR department and legal involved; play by the rules of your own company.

The self promotion has helped me over the years and it can help you too. So maybe the next time you are at a conference a friend will walk up to you and call you famous. Oh one more thing, that friend is Dan Lynn, co-founder of a bunch of companies and someone I should reach out to one of these days. of the full service marketing firm, DigitalGrit.

Yes I'm in love with Siri. I didn't need a new iPhone because I have a gently used iPhone 4 but I kept seeing the commercials and reading reviews online. Plus my iPhone is always near my side while my camera, so I like the idea of having an 8 mega pixel camera close by. So I went online for a few nights right around 9PM to see if I could reserve one. After a few tries, Jacob got through on my iPhone while we were driving back from dinner and he reserved it.

I got my new white iPhone and it is awesome. I already had upgraded my operating system on my 4 but I like the feel, brightness, and camera of the 4s. The battery life seems to be bad, but I read that's a glitch that Apple is fixing.

However, Siri is awesome and well worth the money. Sure Apple features some cool features like playing music and searching for locations nearby, but here's what I think is awesome and all done by speaking into the phone

I can schedule calendar appointments

I can set reminders

Siri can read my new text messages

I can reply to text messages by speech

I can send email by speech

I can call people by using their name, Siri gives me the option to choose which phone number

It can play different music

This kind of speech technology has been around for a while but nowhere near as good as Siri (see Google Voice) However, with Siri I'd say she gets about 90% correct plus she can learn. For example, she knows when I want to speak with Mary, Siri dials her mobile.

If you havent upgraded in a while, go get the iPhone 4s. If you have an iPhone 4 ditch it and get the 4s. Rely on Siri to take care of the tasks outlined above. She is awesome.

This morning my wife received an email letting us know that an order was being delivered to our house from Newegg.com. She asked me had I ever heard of them? I said no. So we Googled Newegg.com and found out it is an ecommerce website specializing in tech and equipment, so we thought it was odd that we received an email. Mary thought it was a gift because we get a lot of deliveries due to the media we buy.

That was until we got the shipment. It turned out to be a Nokia Lens for a camera but no camera was there. There was a shipping order and no gift note. It also appeared that our credit card could have been charged so Mary called American Express and I called Newegg.com.

Newegg claimed that an order was placed with my wife's credit card with the 4 digit code, our email address, and shipped to our home address. This lens cost over $1100. Of course this was fraud and I was furious. Mary spoke with Amex and they quickly credited our account and put in a fraud investigation, plus canceled that card. That left me with the morons at Newegg.com. So without boring you with the details of call after call, here's where I landed....

This was fraudulent and placed by some unscrupulous type. They were planning on shipping an item to our house to try to intercept it before we did. The item called for a signature but out here in rural NJ where we know our UPS and FedEx driver only the most sought after items require a signature (iPhone, jewelry, etc)

This was fraudulent and a thief got our card and info but they were really stupid and used the billing address as the ship to address.

Newegg.com is soft on security and has serious security problems

Newegg wants me to believe that our card that is rarely used somehow got compromised, the thief then got our address and email, then purchased an $1100 camera lens, and shipped it to our house where the thief was going to intercept it after our UPS driver left it without getting a signature. Wow - that's a mouthful.

Right an $1,100 camera lens? Right they thought that the UPS driver would just leave it and then they'd drive up to a rural home and get the package that supposedly needed a signature before we did.

You know what I got out of the Newegg.com reps? They are in the middle of a security upgrade that might be ready in a few months. You know what I learned in Google? We are not the first ones to have this happen to them.

I don't trust Newegg.com. I think their security is minimum at best. I think they have no credit card fraud protection and in fact based on the blog post above there is definitely something wrong at Newegg.com

I don't believe their story. It seems way too far fetched. A thief goes to all of that effort to order an $1,100 camera lens in the hopes they'd get it before we picked it up? I think there is something wrong with Newegg.com. I think Newegg.com's systems are suspect at best. I don't believe Newegg.com has great security (their reps confirmed this with forthcoming security upgrade). I don't trust Newegg.com at all. Who knows what kinds of people work there.

I wouldn't use them. I wouldn't trust their site. I would never enter a single piece of personal data and certainly wouldn't use a credit card.

Do I think Newegg.com is running a scam? I don't know but I don't want to use their site and I wouldn't trust them with a single byte of personal information. Newegg.com is not worthy of a site visit and is worthy of being federally investigated. We are not the first ones to have this happen to them and I bet with their lousy security we won't be the last.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

UPDATE: I'M SHUTTING DOWN COMMENTS. THIS POST WAS MADE ALMOST TWO YEARS BACK. THINGS HAVE CHANGED. I HAVENT HAD ANY RUN INS WITH NEWEGG.COM. I DONT ALLOW ANY CARDS TO HAVE A CHARGE FROM THEM. I'D SUGGEST YOU DO THE SAME.

I've been Googling my name for a while...way back towards my Harrisdirect days. I always thought it was important to see what's being written about me because when someone is trying to figure out your credibility they Google you. Way back then it was called G-Cred and I wrote a post 4 years ago about it (you know that reminds me, maybe I should start pumping out some of my best posts from years back).

Earlier this year I read an article about Kloutand signed up; my Klout wasn't very high so I didn't pay attention to it. However, very recently I was asked by a reporter doing a story on politics and social media, what I thought about using Klout. Well, my reply was, once I can figure out whether someones Klout is conservative, republican, tea party, liberal, democrat, etc it's not the most useful in a primary race. Sure it can be used for non-partisan campaigns, but in the midst of a Republican Presidential Primary, not so sure.

Then, I checked out some of their API notes and yes you can do some analysis and find people in an area who have high Klout. Still not sure about using it today for Presidential Politics, but I think it is an area to explore.

I'm also not too sure about Klout's business plan or revenue making model going forward, but right now I don't care too much. I'm generally interested to see the changes to Klout and it is kind of fun to figure out ways to improve your own Klout. Is it the new GCred? Well right now I don't see anyone replacing Google for determining a person's credibility but I do think Klout is a fun way to see how good your social reach is (BTW the average Klout score is 20).

A lot of political amateurs put weight into Google's ability to predict outcomes in elections based on search trends. Personally, I've always used Google's search traffic as a trailing indicator of strength and of course as a way to capitalize on the traffic for marketing. Whether it is straight paid search, YouTube, or display ads in Google's display network a sudden increase in traffic offers opportunities to either defend your positions or increase membership/donations. So let's take a peek at the last 90 days in Google Search for a few of Republican presidential candidates plus one more.

So what do I see?

You can see the double spike for Michele and Rick Perry on August 13. Obviously that was the Iowa Straw Poll win for Michele and then Perry's announcement. Both of those were tremendous fundraising opportunities

Perry's traffic really takes a steep slide after the announcement but in the past 90 days he has the most amount of search traffic (you can see the strength by the color coded bars). I don't know what their online advertising activities are, but from what I've seen it's zero.

There were two Perry spikes around the early and mid September debates. Those were around the debate attacks he was getting around his HPV executive order and other points brought up concerning his conservative track record. Those were defensive, rapid response activities (that links to an old post on how to use search for rapid response) that were missed or fundraising opportunities for other candidates (see this clickz article).

At the end of September there are two very interesting spikes. The first one is around Herman Cain and this should represent fundraising opportunities for him but like Perry, I haven't seen any online advertising since the Iowa Straw Poll. To put the Cain spike in perspective the height looks a lot like the height for Perry's announcement, Michele's Straw Poll Victory, or Michele's announcement back in June (not shown on this chart). Cain should be getting a lot of donations now and names of people interested in joining his campaign - however, like a lot of these sudden spikes, he needs to capitalize on the short term opportunities.

The other spike is the Chris Christie spike, which until this week the search traffic was pretty vanilla. I personally don't believe my Governor is running for President in 2012 but that spike at least represents huge interest or the pressure he is under. If they had a PAC advertising around his name this would represent a great opportunity to fundraise or gather names of potential supporters.

Google search traffic is a trailing indicator of events that have occurred or are occurring in real time. It represents good marketing opportunities if you know how to capitalize it. Oh one final Chris Christie note, if his search traffic spikes to the August 13 traffic spike, you can pretty much be guaranteed that he opted to run for President.

On a YouTube Politics panel I was on, I was asked by the moderator, Google Account Executive Robert Saliterman, if I had any advice for President Obama's ad campaign. I did and it turned out to be a little controversial. I do admit that I was trying to add a little pizazz towards the end of the panel, but I really do believe my arguments are sound.

Basically, I think that the President of the United States should not be running a site called "Attack Watch" where someone can go to report an attack, track "false" reports and facts, and read all sorts of Obama propaganda. It was wrong when President Nixon had a list and it is wrong when President Obama makes a list (unless you are one of the media agencies, then it can be helpful 'Natch).

When challenged by my panelists during the panel and afterwards, I do believe that the President should not be running a site like this, especially with the data collection capabilities available in 2012. Basically if you report someone or sign up for emails, President Obama can do the following with your data - personally identifiable and non PII data linked together.

When you visit Attack Watch take a look all the way at the bottom for the Privacy Policy Link. Then take a read through it. If you don't have the time, here are the low-lights that prove my point, that the President should not have this data available to him....BTW - in case they change the policy, I copied and pasted these links on September 17, 2011 so they were LIVE when Attack Watch was launched.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT: Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and credit card information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites.

In addition, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may require us to collect personal information from donors. For example, the FEC requires us to collect (and disclose) the name, mailing address, occupation, and employer of all individuals whose donations exceed $200 per calendar year.

Passive Collection: When you use the Sites, some information is also automatically collected, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring web site, and your activity on our Sites. We treat this information as personal information if we combine it with or link it to any of the identifying information mentioned above.

In some cases, third party vendors may collect personal information from you, such as your name and email address, on other web sites and provide this information to us, or OFA may collect personal information that you enter directly within an advertising unit.

We may share personal information as follows: with vendors, consultants, and other service providers or volunteers who are engaged by or working with us and who need access to such information to carry out their work for us; with candidates, organizations, groups or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles or objectives;

Basically, what does this mean? Simple. President Obama can:

collect your web surfing behaviors on and off their sites

combine it with personal information like credit card, employment, phone number

use the combined data for anything it wants

and then provide that information to anyone it wants - that information can include the information you reported on a friend or neighbor

Do you really think the President of the USA should have this information? Do you really think the President of the USA should have a site to report neighbor and then combine this information? I don't. I might not be so scared if they didn't offer up that they could combine the PII with non-PII data, but they can according to their privacy policy.

I think it is one thing for a candidate to collect this type of marketing information. However, it is not appropriate when your Government does.

***This is a repost from many years ago. I had considered retiring it this year, but I always get notes from friends thanking me for this. BTW - I still carry that Hale and Hearty Soup frequent buyer card. Weird huh?***

I thought my post from the other day would be enough for me, but with my kids asking questions while we are watching the football game I feel like making a post. Instead of the normal paragraph form, I'm just going to list out random thoughts that I'm having...

No I never worked in the WTC and in fact the first time I even ventured into the Path Station was probably in the mid-90s

No I didn't know anyone that was there that day

When I joined CSFBdirect and had my office "downsized" I chose a cube by the window because at least when my AT&T friends called me I could say I had the greatest view in the world

WTC became my beacon when I finally came out of the covered roadway after being stuck in traffic on my way to the Holland Tunnel

I absolutely loved heading over to WTC during lunch to browse the Border's Book Store

For some reason, I still carry a Hale and Hearty Soup frequent buyer card in my wallet, punched last on 9/7 at the kiosk that used to be in front of the Path

I was supposed to have a meeting the morning of 9/11 in AOL's lower Manhattan offices that was canceled the day before - I still keep the copy of my calendar from that week

We used to go for drinks in Moran's some times after work even though it had over priced drinks

My last time through (9/7) I was in a hurry and didn't stop by the Warner Brother's Store to pick my son up a stuffed Bugs Bunny; 5 years later I don't let time get in the way any more

My wife had a doctor's visit to determine whether she was pregnant (which she was); that still creeps me out when you hear about all of the people that didn't know they were pregnant that day and lost someone

My last normal time in NYC was watching the ladies US Open Final between the Williams sisters on 9/9; I haven't watched tennis live since then

It helped me to write down what little things changed that day so I could remember what it was like before 9/11

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. 2010 update. I think a lot of folks have wiped from their memory how horrific these attacks were. So I added this photo from my own personal collection of pictures. As you can read above, I worked right across the river and a week after the attacks I was down at Ground Zero while everything was still burning; 9 years later I can still see the flames, the smoke and remember the smell

P.S. 2011 Check back tomorrow. I will add a link to more personal photos I took a few weeks after 9-11-01 when I walked around ground zero. It was still burning that day and a week later I came down with my only case of pneumonia.

P.S. 2013 Reading this again is very interesting after everything I've been through in 2013. I look back and think - wow this really was a different world

JCP&L or also known as Jersey Central Power and Light is unfortunately my forced power supply company in Long Valley NJ. This isn't the first time I've been without electrical power and those of you that know me for a long time, know how important electricity is to me. However, this is the first time I'm generally angry with JCP&L and it's not due to the lack of power, it's due to their lack of communication.

OK so quick background. Hurricane Irene blows into town. We have electricity - no problem through the night and then through most of the day on Sunday. The kids and I even went outside to play catch in the afternoon. Then as I was bragging on Facebook our power went out around 3:30. It's still out The only reason you are reading this post is that one of our friends in Long Valley lent us their generator (we had more than one person offer us). We didn't plug in our fridges or freezers because they defrosted on the overnight. So over 24 hours later still no JCP&L but that's not what has me angry.

What has me angry is the utter lack of communications from this company - specifically this "lack of information, restoration chart". It's inexcusable in a world of texting, internet, Twitter, and Facebook. How can a company in 2011, not know these tools exist and they are dirt cheap. Let's take a look at how awful their communications are:

That chart has not been updated. Does anyone in this state actually believe you have NO RESTORATION INFORMATION? Of course not.

When you cruise Twitter, all there is information on how bad their communication process is. People are downright angry not due to the lack of power but due to the lack of communication.

How about a text messaging program or email program to let me know when you have restoration information.

Writing about email, PSE&G who I use for the office building in Union NJ has been emailing me once a day since Irene was bearing down on NJ. JCP&L - nothing.

When you visit their website you see a big graphic regarding the hurricane so clearly someone there thought, hmmm, let's throw up a graphic except the clicks to that graphic bring up useless information including links to useless press releases.

Oh back to the "no restoration information" map, when you look at power outages in Long Valley the count is going down which means power is being restored, so clearly, THERE HAS TO BE AN UPDATE OF SOME KIND.

So, no Twitter, FB, website updates, email updates and no useful press releases. All of which are cheap and could probably be handled by existing staff. So what happens? People call into their call center and this drives up costs and actually creates angry customers who have to sit and listen to hold music.

Finally, my last rant, I am sick and tired of being told not to touch a downed power line. Give me something more useful than that

Seriously JCP&L you have to be better than this. Communications in the digital world aren't so hard and if I was there, I guarantee you I can make a positive business case just by saving on inbound calls. Please try to embrace some kind of digital communications before the next power failure. Imagine what would have happened if there was a real disaster.

As you can see from my last post I was extremely frustrated with Windows and Internet Explorer. Also, my laptop which was almost 3 years old was nearing the end. The battery wasn't holding a charge very long (it's my second battery) and when I was in Iowa for a week in became quite apparent to me how slow my laptop had become on bootup. Plus, one of the folks on the Iowa team had a Macbook Air and I became extremely jealous.

However, I still was reluctant to make the switch. The Air I wanted plus the Apple Care and tax turned out to be around $2K and that's a big nut to swallow. Similar (not really) HPs were in the $1300 range. I went back and forth but my wife decided, that I should test out a MacBook Air so off we went to the Bridgewater NJ Mac store.

Of course I bought it and after about a week, here's my quick review - BTW if you think this is going to be a Mac Fan Boy post, guess again. To put this in perspective, I started using a PC in the mid 1980s while in high school - that would be MSDOS. I've kept my floppy discs from college in a box as a joke for my kids. I spent countless hours in Hill Center at Rutgers using email in the earliest days of email, I remember downloading photos with a dial up modem that took hours, and while at AT&T I was made a Microsoft rep so I remember installing Windows 1.0, Word 1.0 and Excel 1.0. Finally, I probably have better Excel skills than about 95% of the users out there...

THE GOOD STUFF FOR AN OLD PC GUY LIKE ME

The machine itself is a work of art. It's light, fast, pretty, I can't say enough good things

The battery lasts at least 5 hours of serious work applications

Itunes with iPhone and iPad just seem to work better

The mouse gestures are awesome - easy to use if you are a heavy iPad/iPhone person

The build in apps like iCal, iPhoto, Facetime, contacts, Grab, iChat, and mail are great products

The new Lion operating system seems very stable and easy to use.

Opening Office docs is easy

THE IT'S HARD TO TEACH AN OLD PC DOG NEW TRICKS SECTION

Importing your email is next to impossible if you don't use Outlook. I had to create a Gmail account that I used as an IMAP account on both computers to get some of my archived email over.

The compatibility between your old calendar and contacts are also problematic Calendar was handled via Google and Contacts was via iPhone

I didn't want to get Office. It's expensive. Mail coupled with iCalendar and Contacts is better than Outlook. Pages and Keynote are superior products but it takes a while to get trained. Basically, training yourself on those products will take time and commitment - don't fool yourself.

And then there's Excel. I miss it. Numbers is not as good. As opposed to Pages and Keynote which seem easy and better Numbers is not. After a week, I miss Excel, but Microsoft wont let you just buy Excel. So I'm going to grin and bear it with Numbers for a while.

Oh - did I mention CSV files that you download from the internet. They dont import in Numbers well. You need to go from Pages and change the commas to tabs and then import it.

I miss the backspace button

After a week, the machine is awesome. It's the best out there. It does require some level of commitment to make it work - think LONG TERM commitment. Even an old Windows guy can be off and running but to really get into it, it does require time and effort. The biggest downer is Numbers. It shouldn't even be described as a spreadsheet software. The title of the app should just be Numb.

When I browse the internet, my browser of choice is Google Chrome. It used to be Firefox, but I couldn't stand the updates. My backup browser is Safari and in third place, a distant third, is Internet Explorer. In fact, the only time I ever used IE was to login into Microsoft's AdCenter and Atlas. AdCenter is for managing search campaigns on Bing and Atlas is a third party ad server I use to place ads on specific sites for media buys. You see Microsoft in their infinite wisdom really only allows IE as the acceptable browser. AdCenter I can get in with Safari and look around but eventually, I have to use IE.

That was until a week ago. Internet Explorer just stopped working. I have no clue why. So after uninstalling it, I tried installing IE 9 and after many times I gave up. I have no clue why it won't install and Microsoft's knowledgebase is only good for serious gear heads. I installed update after update and upgraded my DirectX and still nothing. I must have spent 4 hours and all I kept seeing was IE crapping out and the Blue Screen of install.

So I gave up. I used my old computer to login into AdCenter and Atlas and moved on.

I don't understand the logic of forcing advertisers to use a specific browser to manage ad campaigns.

I dont understand why it is so hard to install Internet Explorer.

I dont understand why the KB solutions are so hard to understand.

I dont understand all of the constant updates.

If I wanted something turnkey that I don't really understand how it works, maybe I should just get a MAC and call it a day. That's saying a lot for someone that used DOS and remembers Windows 1.0. Plus, back at AT&T I was voluteered to be a Microsoft sales connection for Office products.

Microsoft, you make it really hard to stay a customer. I think I'm done.

Yes the world is all a twitter about Google+ which is Google's real social networking application. And my initial reaction is, it's a Twitter killer and will be an effective alternative to Facebook. I've had a hate, love, hate, relationship with Twitter over the years, but I think Google+ puts Twitter out of its misery. Sorry if you like Twitter, but it kind of sucks. So, here's why I think Google+ is a Twitter killer and why I like it in addition to Facebook.

Twitter posts are kind of like spitting out your car window while cruising on the NJ Turnpike. If someone is following you or happens to see it, someone might read your Tweet (ie - gets hit by your spit). Otherwise, the Tweet just makes the Tweeter feel better.

Twitter has no real advertising model and they are out of time. Yes you can run promoted tweets or promoted trends, but their model has suboptimal targeting so no sophisticated, one:one advertiser can use it.

Are you a celeb, football player, etc? Then maybe your tweets can get you some earned press. If you are a regular person, do you really think your friends are online waiting anxiously to read your tweet?

Twitter is another site or app you need to access.

Finally, not to leave Facebook out of this rant, but the one thing Twitter has over FB is its ability to broadcast worldwide. One of my beefs about Facebook is that it isnt easy to just broadcast to groups of people.

Google+ solves a lot of Twitter's problems, my one main issue with FB, and then has something that the other two are desperately trying to get which is more utility. Here's why...

G+ gives you the ability to broadcast publicly or to specific circles

There is a slick interface to add friends and to put them in circles.

It's really easy to message to specific circles; yes you can do something like that with FB but it isnt as slick.

If I'm awake, I'm in AdWords. So having everything linked to my Google account is very efficient.

I think Facebook is too large and too embedded in the web for Google+ to displace it. Twitter on the other hand is dead man walking. I think G+ can easily replace it and once G+ is linked with news sites like FB, it will be an effective foil to Facebook.

It's 7:30 AM and I've just downloaded my emails from last night like a lot of you. And like I've done for the past 6 or more months I've deleted Groupon emails. I hardly ever read them so this morning I decided enough is enough and I unsubscribed.

Groupon right now is just spam - not the illegal kind but the completely useless kind of email and I'm tired of hitting delete. Their personalization engine does not exist and why should I wait for it to get better?

Unfortunately in all these months I saw one targeted offer but I didn't pull the trigger on it. It was for a family run sub shop called the Sub Pub in Chester NJ. Everyone in town goes there so you'd think that I would have jumped at it but after going there for as long as I've lived in Long Valley I couldn't bring myself to cash in the coupon. However, that's the only correctly targeted email I've seen.

Coupons for a manicure? No thanks. Hot stone rock massage? Yah sounds good but no. Dance lessons? I got married stepping on my wife's toes so why learn now. Right now Groupon has no personalization. That makes it Web 1.0 and just spam. I love trying out new restaurants but the coupons I get for them are for days that don't work or for restaurants that are not close by.

In an era where personalization is becoming a reality and people are worried about what Google and Facebook knows about you and shares with advertisers, Groupon acts like a company from the dotcom bust. Yes I get that Groupon should get better but I have the feeling that unless you live in a big city and don't have kids, Groupon right now is just spam.

So the political world was all in a tizzy because President Obama announced he was running for reelection. I know what a surprise. Of course, it launches all of the political campaigning spin including how the campaign is going to be different, built from the ground up without any big TV campaigns. Of course you know they are coming - that's where he spent the vast majority last time around.

Back in 2007/2008 he promised to be a different candidate rising above partisan politics and making all sort of campaign promises from staying within campaign finance laws, closing Gitmo, not going to war without Congressional approval, single payer health care, fixing the economy, letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and so on. However, rising above partisan politics is what attracted people not normally involved in politics with that hope and change message.

Well, what I found very curious was how their initial online ad buy was very much partisan. In fact, so blatenly partisan that I was surprised and spent 15 minutes out of my busy day looking around for his ads.

Of course I found text ads on Google (can't let his buddy Eric Schmidt down) but that's not where the real money was spent. I found giant take over ads (full page ads shown here) on Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, and Talking Points memo. Pretty much the big 3 in the liberal news/blogger world. Clearly Obama's target was his base but has it shrunk so much that they only wanted to target the liberal sites?

I looked on CNN. Nothing. NY Times, LA Times, Politico, MSNBC, Washington Post, and even slid down the liberal news/blogger list and found nothing - nothing other than on those big 3. Could the President really have put a cap on his online ad budget at launch and only went with those 3 sites?

And really, The Daily Kos? Have you actually read the comments and blog posts made there? Do you really think The Daily Kos attracts independents? Has your base and budget shrunk so much that you had to make The Daily Kos a critical component for your reelection campaign. Don't tell me you didn't need to advertise on CNN because you would have earned media - clearly those big 3 sites would be drooling over your campaign too. At least with the NY Times you'd catch non-liberals reading the business or sports pages...

I'm a little surprised about how obviously partisan this ad buy was at launch. It didn't even look to try to find people other than his base.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I know this was very unscientfic and there may have been other buys I didn't see, maybe even hyperlocal ads

You have to give the NFL owners a little credit. They actually read some articles on public affairs but unfortunately it seems they only read about online public affairs from the 2006 election cycle. And I dont think that old playbook is enough to help them fight the earned media the players are receiving. NFL Owners versus the Players is a losing battle unless the Owners actually open up their wallets for what would amount to be a grain of sand out of their money.

PLAYERS

They have all of the earned media on their side. For the most part, these are people that have improved their skills through hard work and dedication. They give up their health in exchange for 10 years or so of fame and fortune. Fans want to connect with them and be around them. ESPN and your local sports reporters want them on their programs because they drive ratings. Plus, don't underestimate player Facebook and Twitter pages. Basically, the Players have earned media behind them and the longer the lockout goes the more sympathetic fans will be.

OWNERS

They have little earned media opportunity. Roger Goodell is the face of the owners and do you really want to see him or get his autograph? Then go to the individual owners. Sure there is Jerry Jones but at the end of the day who do you associate with? Players or owners. The owners need to counter the player's earned media with paid media.

Now the owners have been doing the bear minimum to date. They've pushed out email (see below) as soon as the negotiations broke down. They are running a small amount of search ads and directing it to a NFL Labor site. The site has good up to date information, tries to counter player Tweets, and provides categories to browse for specific information. However, they need to kick it up a notch....

WHAT THE OWNERS SHOULD BE SPENDING MONEY ON

No cheap stuff. Go get $500K for 1-2 months worth of marketing and do things like:

Promoted tweets to drive to the owner information twitter account

Rich media video campaign to get out their messaging. Target men 25 - 55 across big ad network buys

Google click to play video ads across Google's ad network

Buy search ads on NFL player's names with the largest twitter followers

Pre-roll videos in YouTube, AOL, and other top video sites; again target men

Blast out on sports blogs

Heck, even make ad buys on ESPN and other sports news sites

Make an assumption that fantasy baseball players are also interested in the NFL and run ads

Update the display and rich media ads at least once per week based on fast moving stories

Run ad awareness studies to see how the ads impact public perception

Those are just a few ideas for the owners. Unless they kick up their paid media, they are really just wasting their time with their meager efforts to date.

I had a great conversation the other day with my good friend Cathy Davis regarding LinkedIn. I was surprised to hear how much she uses it and how useful it has been to her marketing consulting business. What made me laugh out loud was I remember when she first logged onto LinkedIn when we were working together at Harrisdirect. To me LinkedIn was a place I turned to when looking for a job years ago or a kind of online business rolodex. So after I got off the phone with her, I decided to make some changes to my own use of the three major social networking tools (is there really more than 3?). So effective immediately....

Facebook - for a while now you had to know me in order to connect with me on Facebook and if you know me than you know that I like posting things on my family, long valley, and politics. So if you don't want to see a boring home video - move on. If you don't like my politics, by all means, comment a way; however, once you start getting nasty or personal -you are either going to get an email from me or the boot.

LinkedIn - this will be for the most part my digital marketing playground. I may make status updates directly onto LinkedIn regarding online, you may see posts indirectly posted from my blog or Twitter; I wont be turning those off but then again, I'm not directly making those posts. This should be a relatively political and family free social site. In order to be my contact a LinkedIn you have to at least prove to me you know who I am...

Twitter - I continue my love a little, hate a little relationship but for me Twitter is about inbound and outbound links. I will follow almost anyone if they follow me. Unfortunately, if you are looking for a conversation with me, Twitter is probably not the place for that to occur with me. It's about links

I'm going to give this a go. The biggest changes are the greater use of LinkedIn for digital thoughts and the relentless focus of politics and family on Facebook. Don't be upset with me if I give you the boot off of Facebook, but unfortunately those are my two passions and if you don't get that about me, you don't get to hang with me in Facebook.

I think the amount of spam has been taking a disturbing uptick lately. Why? I think in the past few years there has been a programmed theory that email is dead or just for old folks and these days that everyone communicates via text messaging and Facebook. I have to admit I was starting to go down that path but in the past year I've change my mind. I think email is back and better than ever. Why?

People don't bookmark websites any more. Information is pushed to people via Twitter, Facebook, Search, YouTube, RSS Feeds, and yes email. Big websites seem clunky these days. Light, fast, branding sites seem more appropriate and while building those big sites are often a boon for agencies, I think marketers should really ask themselves, do you need a big website?

Now, back to email. I think some companies have let their database marketing skills slip because FB and Google seemed sexier and that real predictive modeling and database marketing are not skills you get by reading Mashable. That's why when I got this strange email from Live Nation I laughed out loud.

Yes somehow I got an email offering a free Barbara Streisand collectible from the Barbara Streisand's store. I have never, ever even clicked on a link for Barbara Streisand and can honestly say (really write) I don't think I can name a single song. Now, how would Live Nation get my email?

Oh, that's simple. Bruce Springsteen merchandise which makes this email on Barbara Streisand even more bizarre. The music genre couldn't be any more different, in fact the only things Bruce and Barbara have in common are the initials in their name and that they are both liberals.

Clearly the folks at Live Nation have no clue how to run an email marketing campaign. There can't be any flag in the music industry that puts these two audiences together. I would have unsubscribed but I thought to myself that perhaps occasionally Live Nation will get how emails really work and send me an email I could use. Streisand?Really?

Today, I got an email from Townhall.com that showcased the video interviews they conducted at CPAC last week. Ignore the fact that I've tried unsubscribing multiple times (more on that later) from their emails over the years, so I clicked on an interview with Michele Bachmann which directed me to a YouTube video that was listed as private (more on that soon). Towards the end of the interview, I hear that Ms. Bachmann occasionally blogs at a section of Townhall called tipsheet.

And that's when I got abused by online ads. Giant belly fat ads. Expanding ads. Popups that followed me up and down the page. So bad that I couldn't spend any time trying to read any articles. I mean look at this...Does anyone there care about content on the site?

So I went back to the site just a few minutes ago and the home page is just as bad especially with the home page takeovers and multiple ad placements. Look for yourself

I buy a ton, if not the most, political ads on the Republican side. Townhall should be a key component but it can't be anymore. These ads are a Chief Revenue Officer's or Sales Executive's ad revenue maximization plans gone bad. Seriously, do they even realize that people need to read content in order to monetize it.

That also goes to the email sales mentality of not being able to unsubscribe (and I'm not the only one). Throw in the YouTube private link which makes it impossible to find in YT search results (thinking the clicks are coming from emails only) and you get the idea of a desperate site looking to squeeze every dollar out of the site before it folds up.

You can't buy direct on this site anymore if you care about your brand. I'm not even sure it is worth sneaking it in on an ad network buy because think of how bad the ad position would be. I used to feel that way about Drudge and even with Drudge's auto refresh, it still gives great placements.

Townhall? Right now that's where good online ads go to die. I hope someone at Townhall fixes their ad model because it used to be a good site.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. - Even though we don't work on Sarah Palin anymore, I'd recommend pulling those book ad creatives from the site or talking to the publisher about pulling the ads if you have any care in your brand.

I'm a little over due with this post, but I'm hoping you'll find it interesting anyway. Last month, ClickZ a great (mostly internet) marketing news site posted a story requesting industry or consumer input on the FTC's Do Not Track proposal. Not sure what that means? Simply the Federal Government is worried about your privacy on the internet and how you can be helped to avoid being personally identifiend on the internet if that's what you choose. Still confused or perhaps you are my Mom reading this...so here goes...

Most of the time websites and technology companies that serves ads drop cookies on your machine. You can delete them if you know where to look. Some of these cookies you ask for when you want a website to save your ID and password. Most of the time the cookies are anonymous and help advertisers track results, sometimes companies move you into behavioral targets based on what you do online, and sometimes companies match data and get even more scary information on you. Occasionally, you'll see or hear about a company like Facebook releasing personally identifiable information. Well the Federal Government wants to help you.

ClickZ reporter Kate Kaye was nice enough to send me a note with a bunch of questions and here are my replies. What do you think about my answers?

How should a universal choice mechanism be designed for consumers to control online behavioral advertising? I don’t think consumers should be able to monitor what is tracking their online behavioral. I think there should be mechanisms for consumers to opt out of behavior targeted ads. I’ll answer in more detail in some of the other questions

can such a mechanism be designed to be clear, easy-to-find, usable, and understandable to consumers? How can such a mechanism be designed so that it is clear to consumers what they are choosing and what the limitations of the choice are? HTo me there are two clear and easy paths for advertising. One is behavioral targeted ads and one is non-behavioral targeted ads. I don’t think there should be ANY obstacles to non-behavioral targeted ads including the tracking of them. Advertisers should be able to buy on paid search and display ads bought without the benefit of behavioral advertisers – this includes retargeting ads. If you are on a website and reading content, the publisher should be able to make money and the advertisers should be able to track with cookies. This is the same model of TV advertising. However, I think behavioral targeted and retargeting ads should have notification in the idea of a frame around the ad unit in yellow or green or some kind of icon on the bottom right hand that notifies consumers that this is a behavioral targeted ad. A click thru on this icon should take users to a page where they can opt out of the behavioral targeted advertising including having the cookie purged from their machine. Also, the consumer should be able to see what behavioral triggered this ad. The one area for compromise would be in same session clicks where ads are triggered based on recent clicks. Perhaps that immediacy of those ads can be carved out as a loophole.

Should the concept of a universal choice mechanism be extended beyond online behavioral advertising and include, for example, behavioral advertising for mobile applications? This absolutely should be extended for mobile where the abuse I think could be far more dangerous if your phone number is grabbed.

What is the likely impact if large numbers of consumers elect to opt out? How would it affect online publishers and advertisers, and how would it affect consumers? I don’t think in my model much would be affected. Sure some of these behavioral targeting companies will be put out of business but let’s be honest, what kind of data do they have on people?

I have a new pet peeve with Google AdWords. Back in the summer (I think) Google stopped providing complete data on your broad match campaigns when it discontinued certain reports. It annoyed me then and I asked some of my Google Account Reps to dig into it, but nothing changed. Confused? Well here's what's going on in Google's ongoing effort to dumb down advertising...

Broad match is the defaulted match type that Google gives you for keywords. The data they publish is almost always broad match too. Broad match is the process by which Google determines which search queries your ads appear on. It's the reason why early on people saw McCain for President ads on people searching for french fries.

Google determines a Quality Score for each keyword you are looking to have your ads appear on. It's a score between 1-10; 10 means you are awesome and theoretically pay less per click and a 1 means your ad won't get served very often if at all. Google also defaults to NOT showing you your Quality Score (another pet peeve)

Click thru rate is a factor in Quality Score

So here's what happens. Google shows your ads on additional search queries for broad match keywords. If those ads don't get clicked on, Google's rationale is that well they'll eventually stop serving those ads on those queries and you aren't paying for them anyway, so what's the harm? Well see this screen shot for why I think this is a problem

Notice how my ads were shown on 18,760 search queries and received zero clicks? Sure I didn't pay for those ad impressions but what did they appear on? Were they impacting my brand awareness? Are there new terms that I didn't know before and haven't put a negative in that my ads are appearing on? Plus, are they session based searches?

In Google's drive to simplify their platform they have hidden data from their users. Sure I didn't pay for them, but that's not the point. I want control. I want to see these terms especially for a branding or a political client. I want my data back so I can make better decisions. Come on Google you can do better and you have...

A few friends shared this Wall Street Journal article with me yesterday called The Price of Unwanted Clicks and I found it very enlightening and sometimes often laughable. The biggest discussion was on session based search results and how some advertisers think these clicks are costing them lots of money. You know what? They could be, but I'm not sure the average advertiser even knows what's going on and in the case of doctors, lawyers and other expensive click services it can be very costly. First, let's go over what these session based clicks are, how you can minimize them, and why hiring an expert is a good idea.

Session based clicks are a result of ads being shown on potentially unrelated keyword searches when a user has multiple searches within a single session. Basically it is a way for Google to serve ads to a unique user rather than just a unique search. The ads are shown below the typical paid sponsored results. The way these ads are shown are when you use Broad match for your keywords.

Broad match is basically Google's way of expanding the amount of searches your ads appear on by an algorithm. That of course includes session based searches. Buying the name "john mccain" on broad match means if you don't know what you are doing, your ads can be shown on "french fries". Broad can expand your buy to new search terms, cheaper clicks, and more sales, but of course can also generate unwanted useless clicks.

You can manage your broad searches with a number of techniques including negatives, account structure, search query data, and broad match modifiers. See this is more complicated than what you thought, right?

Of course, Google wants to sell you more ads and wants to simplify the ad buying process for you. However, paid search is anything but simple. They want to make it so simple to expand their advertising base, but unless you are paying attention and stay up to date, you will most likely be dissatisfied with Google. Remember, Google is in this to make money and constantly tries to improve the engineering behind search and marketing, so changes happen all the time.

You want my advice? Hire an expert to manage your search campaigns. If you are a business owner, why waste your time keeping up with the changes? Let someone manage it who lives and breathes this stuff. If you are paying like $8 per click, why mess around? It can cost you like the advertisers in the article.

The shooting in Arizona over the weekend of Rep. Giffords was extremely upsetting to me. No I wasn't working in that race, but anytime something horrific occurs it makes me stop and ask questions.

Anyway, a lot of friends and family have asked me about the current state of political discussions and in fact, back in the summer, my Temple had a session on political conversations. You see, one of the great aspects of being Jewish is that you are brought up to ask questions and even challenge facts; try reading the Talmud with your or with a Rabbi and watch how people argue over time and distance about when is day and when is night. So I started thinking, is politics worse now or in the past and why can't we have conversations...

I don't think it is more violent now - when was the last time two leaders dueled over name calling? Burr vs Hamilton?

I do think the TV shows on the right and then left are in it for the money. MSNBC vs Fox - seriously it's about viewers and advertising dollars....

Ever notice that people talk about Olbermann and Rush so much? Why? People listen and they entertain...maybe it is too tough, but they try to get a reaction. Back in the old days when people blogged, the first rule of blogging was to be controversial because that will get you traffic....I wonder where they learned that from?

Personally, I like my news center-right. However, I like hearing both sides. Yes I no longer subscribe to the NY Times but if you send me an article of interest, I will read it. I do watch CNN and listen to it on XM.

In fact, while on XM I do listen to POTUS produced by Pamela Kirkland. I think they do lean center-left but that's ok with me - I want to hear another POV; it helps me do my job better

I've trolled in left and right blogs. Both sides have serious weirdos. You've been hearing about racists in the new political party? Believe that they are only contained to the right? Wrong. Try reading the comments in the DailyKos especially in regards to Senator Lieberman.

Did you laugh when President Bush had a shoe thrown at him? Could he have been hurt? Nothing to compare with what happened in AZ, but how many of you thought that it would have been funny if he got hit...

The murderer at the Arizona shooting is crazy. He doesn't belong to either side. Folks like him are not courted by either side. Trying to frame his shooting as a problem for the Left or Right is wrong. Nobody I've worked for would ever condone such a thing. One thing we can all agree on, is this guy is crazy and what happened in AZ is/was tragic.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I see a lot of media types scrubbing websites and offering to tone down their speech. I hope it lasts longer than just a few token weeks that they think is appropriate.

Google has been running what they are calling The Big Small Business Plan where new AdWords users and existing ones who implement conversion tracking or maintain it, get $100 from Google when they spend $100.

They are even advertising on websites beyond just the AdWords login page - I found this ad on The New York Times. Now before a few opinions, let's take a look at the offer itself

The messaging is classic Google. You don't have to stay small anymore and that you can grow with pay per click only advertising.

They offer free account setup by calling an 800#

The sign up offer is good through 1/15 but they extended it at the end of the year (actually they were a little late in extending but anyway)

And it is good for the first one million small businesses which sounds great

So you as a small business should jump all over this, right? Yes of course you should but you need help and not the kind Google is offering although their free setup is a good start. If anyone gives you $100 for free you should jump at it, however, jump in knowing what's happening...

Google advertising is much more complicated than the offer suggests. You actually need professional, non-Google help

Google typically looks to manage accounts $10K+ per month and even then that's probably not enough any more. I have one client billing $40K per month without a Google Account person - what do you think will happen with the small business billing $100 per month?

Years ago when Google was just starting out you could have had first mover advantage and just using their simple tools, you could have succeeded. Now, unless you are entering a completely new market, the odds are there are prior advertisers with account history.

Google defaults you to all devices and all sites and recommends this for new advertisers. Do you understand what this means?

When you run a search campaign, you obviously get results and most of them are straight forward. However, they automatically don't include Quality Score and Impression Share. Quality Score is probably the most important data point for you.

Quality Score determines whether your ad gets shown, how often, and your CPC. It is impacted by account history, history of other advertisers, relevancy of keywords and ads, and relevancy of your landing pages. Guess what? Broad matches are more difficult to control

I could go on and on but I won't. I'll leave you with this final point. Text ads in Google's Display network, even though you are paying a CPC, suck and 99% of the time, I don't include them.

Oh and one more point. Google is in this to make a lot of money. They make money by showing the ads that makes them the most money. You don't get clicks your ads don't get shown.

Is Google being generous? Yes. Should you sign up for the offer? Yes. Should you get help before you do any of that? Yes. Here's a link to help you find people in your area to help you.

Well kind of glad 2010 is over. It wasn't the worst year I had, but it certainly wasn't a great year. In fact, 2010 gave us two kicks in the mouth, personally, before it ended. Well as I write this, we have about 10 hours left so who knows what can happen. Historically, I never cared much for yearly predictions but lately I've come to embrace them given the focus on politics. So, here's kind of what I'd like to do in 2011 and in no particular order...

Renewed Political Concentration - during the late fall and into December I decided this is what I like to do most. That's not to say that I don't like or don't want to work on private sector projects, I do. However, when I go to dinner parties people want to talk politics. I get in the news, talking about politics. My kids' doctors want to talk politics so instead of fighting it, I'm going 100% in.

Do What Makes Me Happy - through the past couple of years I figured out what makes me the most happy is hanging out with my family. Taking vacations, having parties, watching the kids play sports you get the mushy family stuff. At the end of the year, that's what I remember the most.

I have to lose some weight - I was surprised when I finally bought new jeans that I'm actually not a 40 waist, somehow, miraculously, it appears I'm a 39 and while that's not very good either, I'm still hanging tough. Diet, while can help, will be tough because I like to eat and I sit all day. I need to exercise more and I think I have a plan. If I lose enough fat, maybe I can surf with the kids this summer.

Take care of the little things - Too often I've put these things aside but after going through my father's estate which is almost closed 2.5 years after he died, I realized that taking care of little outstanding things can snow ball. I think in the 21st century we as a group have become too much of a disposable society. While the economy has been up and down, items we buy, in general are cheaper, so rather than fix things we replace things. It's time to fix things and take care of little things, because sometimes you can't replace and those little things become huge.

I'm sure there are other items that normally fall into a new year's resolution list, but I don't want to make those predictions. I think they are kind of lame. I think focusing on the most important goals you have will make for a better year.

A ran into a friend the other night at a town event. As we were leaving, my friend said "Merry Christmas" and then realizing I'm Jewish tried to correct himself and said "Happy Hanukkah" which was actually more awkward. So, with that moment, I decided for me, it's perfectly ok to say "Merry Christmas". And you don't have to say "Happy Hanukkah" when the holiday was like three weeks ago; I actually find it more insulting (like Hanukkah and Christmas share something more besides a month). So, here's...

WHY ITS OK TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO AN AMERICAN JEW OR AT LEAST THIS JEW

Everyone is in such a good mood that if someone is going to tell me to have a Merry day and they don't want to say Merry Tuesday than that's ok.

I think we should say have a Merry day whenever possible

I get cards from people I haven't seen in months and then with the picture cards I get to see how much cuter my kids are than your kids.

Writing about cards, if I got cards in this kind of mass at Hanukkah or some other day maybe I'd take offense, but I don't. In America they come around Christmas.

I get gifts from businesses this time of year. They don't send them at other times of year unless we did something spectacular. I like getting gifts no matter what the occasion.

I send out business gifts or try to schedule end of year lunches. I like that.

Business slows down between this week and after New Year. I work really, really hard so I like having some down time.

I'm not going to convert because hundreds of people tell me Merry Christmas.

Homes get decorated with crazy colors and that puts a smile on my face.

Can we all stop being so politically correct?

Basically, I get gifts, cards, and people who I haven't seen in a while tell me to have a Merry Day. Yes it's Merry Christmas, but I'd rather take that then having someone flip me the bird or show their ignorance by wishing me to have a happy holiday when the holiday was three weeks ago.

After my post about what worked and didn't work in political advertising in 2010, a friend dropped me a note that said he found it interesting that back in 2008, people were all excited about text messaging programs, yet now it seems kind of dead. So I decided to elaborate a little bit on what I think is happening and go a little more in depth into why mobile is working so great. And, unlike some other posts or articles you might read, this one is not just about political marketing; some of us actually have other clients....

Text messaging is what I consider to be a necessary evil. I'm not writing about the send a text message to #1234 or #DONATE, because I believe those are expensive programs with a short life span. Any marketer should be collecting mobile numbers and sending text messages, however if that's your only mobile strategy you are DOA.

The next place a lot of people go to in their mobile strategy is Mobile Search which I think is great place to go to next. However, based on my experience, mobile search is about 10% of desktop volume and requires different tactics. Match type and creative strategies are vastly different as is your bidding and keyword strategies. If you think you can just export your desktop campaign and forget about it, you are wrong.

The game now is mobile display advertising and there are a few places you can go.

Apple has an awesome, yet expensive platform

Until Google finally absorbs AdMob, AdMob has the best rates and best results especially when it comes to CTR in mobile apps

Google of course has two tactics you can use. The first is display ads on mobile websites and the next place is ads in Apps. Display ads on mobile websites are not worth your time unless you like your current display ad's CTRs

The click thru rates and cost per clicks I've seen advertising in Apps are vastly superior than what I've seen on a decent display campaigns; far higher than what many people consider to be a strong CTR campaign of 0.23%. In fact, through Google, you can buy a Mobile Surge the details I outlined in a post on Michele Bachmann's famous State Fair campaign. Also, I believe that the geo-targeting is far more accurate on mobile phones than desktops and this allows you to precisely target people in a smaller radius.

Right now advertising on mobile Apps have superior CTRs, lower CPCs, better targeting, and you can send the clicks into any number of destinations including YouTube videos, App download link, mobile websites, Facebook, and etc. It is not simple at all and there are experts who can help with your strategies and campaigns. Basically, if you are relying on text messaging as your mobile strategy, you will be left behind THIS YEAR!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. If you are anyone but a package goods, retailer QR Codes cause more problems than they are worth, but as usual Google has a solution called Goggles for you.

2010 is probably going to turn out a little better than 2009 but that reminds me of this
on Bill Clinton's bragging about lifting Arkansas' education ranking. Things were still pretty crappy but at least I think 2009 was the bottom for me and I can reflect on what makes me happy and what I'm thankful for this year.

So What Am I Thankful for (in no particular order)

Real friends that actually try and help you rather than the crappy ones I discovered were mostly my father's friends (a few were exceptions).

Good business partners especially the ones I have to deal with at the office building in Union who realized that the economy still stinks and we are all in this together

Family who didn't push me too hard on things I didn't follow up on

My kids - pretty much one of the only reasons I ever got out of bed on some days

Watching my son Jacob pitch - yeah, he's on the younger side in these club and travel teams so isn't as physical and doesn't throw as hard,
but he is fearless on the mound. I'm more nervous when he pitches...

Hanging at the beach and watching Kaela surf

Working from my home office where my palm trees are always a few feet away and my biggest commute is walking downstairs

Being a political consultant and working with great clients and great people at Campaign Solutions and Connell Donatelli

My Giants tickets at the new stadium

Working on political and alcohol which are probably the two best projects to work on together..

It's been a while since I posted and I got tired of looking at the same start screen. So here's my review of what worked and didn't work in the 2010 midterms when it came to political online marketing.

WHAT WORKED

Google once again dominates this space. A big or small campaign, Google is your one stop shop for political marketing. If you can't afford to spend a large chunk of campaign cash here, you are still using a marketing playbook from the 1980s

YouTube - yes I get that is Google too but using pre-roll ads in YouTube is a winning strategy and the key to getting some of that traditional advertising bucks. The cost per view was sub a penny and the CTRs were far higher than any banner ads. Plus promoted video is a key to making sure those unflattering related videos don't keep showing up in your search results.

Mobile Advertising - Sure a lot of people didn't think that 2010 was a mobile year, but we proved on several campaigns that the targeting is far superior than desktop and if you time your message correctly you can have a huge impact. How else can you market your message when a large group of people are attending a huge football game?

Facebook for Communication - I became a big believer in boosting Facebook fans for GOTV, messaging, and spreading the word on candidates. Some folks believe it is a good predictor of elections, me? Not so sure but I think the benefits of using them far outweigh any reason to ignore Facebook's predictive power.

Email Marketing - Yes I wrote that. Last cycle I was starting to buy into the "email is dying hype" but that was wrong. Email is anything but dead and in fact, thrived this cycle. That includes a candidate's house file as well as renting external lists. Email works.

Partisan Websites - You know them....Drudge, RedState, HuffPo. They work. You can get petition signups, donations, and other actions - pretty cheaply.

Fox News TV - Nothing like the shot in the arm you get when a candidate is interviewed by Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck. I don't watch Beck unless a candidate of mine is on but when it comes to donations, I get verrrry excited...

WHAT DIDNT WORK

Big Websites - I love building websites and especially love landing pages. However, the way people get news and information today I'm seeing less and less use of the big websites that caters to everyone. Lighter, faster moving, and highly focused pages are the way to go now. Building deep, heavy sites seem to be going extinct. Think Skittles (yes I wrote that)

Any Social Networking Site Not Named Facebook - Did you really use LinkedIn to effectively reach voters? Come on. There is no other advertising game in town. Twitter is good for pushing out or gathering information, but is currently useless for advertising.

Conversions out of Facebook - Yes I became a big fan of Facebook but getting measurable conversions out of FB besides what's available there is still difficult. The only real conversions I've seen were the two times I clicked on ads to pre-order Springsteen's Live in Hyde Park and The Promise.

Low Search Volume - You can't manufacturer search volume - if it is a small search volume candidate than that is the answer.

Spending too much time worrying about big ROIs instead of plowing some of that money into expanding your reach. The ideal ROI should be between 100% and 125%.

A few interesting articles have been released in the past week or so that highlights that the state of online political marketing looks great. Back when I started in political marketing almost 5 years ago, the rage was blogging, Meet-up, Google Bombs, and video broadcasts. While these are all fine and dandy, now I see the more sophisticated campaigns using mobile marketing, behavioral targeting, email marketing, video ads, search marketing, and lots of banner ads. Also, 5 years ago the campaign manager was often someone we rarely spoke with and now campaign managers are very involved in online advertising. Here are a few recent articles...

Two articles highlighting Michele Bachmann's innovative online marketing campaign, one in TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) and the other in the Star Tribune.

Political marketers get feisty with the lack of advertising opportunities available in Twitter - first covered in ClickZ and then picked up by Fast Company.

Of course the "older" article from ClickZ on political marketing using mobile surges

You probably noticed that I didn't link to any search marketing or display ads but other than a few campaigns, I've noticed plenty of ads buys and complex paid search campaigns and even some smart Facebook campaigns. Regarding the Twitter article, I guess what got me so feisty is that some of the largest Twitter accounts are political yet, there are no viable advertising solutions for us.

While 2008 was definitely when online advertising was placed on the map, people still focused on organic tools like Facebook pages, YouTube channels, MySpace (what a mistake), engaging bloggers, etc. 2010 will be the birth of mobile advertising (not the crappy tactic of sending vote to #12346) and 2012 will be when you do see the tipping point crash through that 10% spend ceiling. Why? All of these smart congressional campaigns will be 2 years wiser, the 2012 Presidential campaign will be fought on the web and not over the air (unless mobile), more of the population will be using electronic devices, paper newspapers should be in a walker, and the campaign managers will move from "what's my website strategy" to "what's my integrated advertising strategy."

OK if you are even a casual observer of politics than you know by now that Christine O'Donnell's long shot bid to take out popular politician Mike Castle for the GOP nomination of Delaware's Senate seat, worked much to the chagrin of party insiders. Now, I didn't have a dog in this fight but for a variety of reasons (some of them personal) I was cheering for her all along. I am still not working on this race and don't expect to, but if I was, here's the advice I'd be giving the campaign right now.

GO 100% DIGITAL ADVERTISING UNTIL 2 WEEKS OUT

Here's why....

Right now according to what I've read in the press, she is going to have a tough time getting help from the NRSC and perhaps even the DE GOP. Of course this could just be a echo from the Primary campaign that's she's unelectable, but in reality, the campaign won't get much support until she closes the gap in polling.

It appeared that she didn't have much money and whatever she did have was spent getting her people out to vote. These first two points rules out TV for now.

A quick peek over in Google's Ad Planner tool shows that there are 560K 18+ people online in Delaware. In one month they generate 2B pageviews with Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube as the top 3 visited sites. These kinds of numbers are definitely in reach of an expensive, advertising campaign, yet one within the realm of possibility.

You can make TV ads very cost effectively. It is the media that costs a lot of money, but if you can hire a good agency, you can stream those ads online VERY cost effectively.

SO WHAT DIGITAL TACTICS WOULD I RECOMMEND?

Raise money NATIONALLY and build your brand locally in Delaware. Yes you can do that quite easily and we do it all the time.

Stream your TV ads online in Google's advertising network and also YouTube. Not the free stuff, but PAID advertising.

Overlay your vote goals with districts, zipcodes, etc and focus your money in the best areas. Even if you want to target all of Delaware, your can run a Google Surge for about $7K per day which is very inexpensive for your TV commercials. Even if that's too rich, you can run something at a 50% share for $3500 per day.

Stop with the minor league search campaigns that you are running right now. When I searched today, I saw some real amateurishness ads running including one still mentioning Mike Castle and that's when an ad rotated in. Those text ads are your life blood to raising money online in and out of the state. And, if you aren't tracking back exactly to which ads/keywords are raising money, you need to switch vendors.

You did great online with your grassroots efforts and bloggers, but guess what you needs all of those folks working in those credit card companies in Wilmington to get you elected and they aren't reading those blogs anymore and may not have time on Facebook. Its time to venture out beyond Facebook and email chains and reach them online with your message.

Once you raise enough money online you can then bankroll dollars for your TV media buy the last two weeks of the campaign. Hopefully by then, you've closed the gap and other entities also start to spending money on TV which they definitely will.

Only by running a truly insurgent campaign online can you win this race. Only by raising money nationally and branding locally can you win. By focusing online now while waiting for the right time to launch TV can you cost effectively run this race. Good luck.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I couldn't go into real detailed tactics but the above is a start.

I thought my post from the other day would be enough for me, but with my kids asking questions while we are watching the football game I feel like making a post. Instead of the normal paragraph form, I'm just going to list out random thoughts that I'm having...

No I never worked in the WTC and in fact the first time I even ventured into the Path Station was probably in the mid-90s

No I didn't know anyone that was there that day

When I joined CSFBdirect and had my office "downsized" I chose a cube by the window because at least when my AT&T friends called me I could say I had the greatest view in the world

WTC became my beacon when I finally came out of the covered roadway after being stuck in traffic on my way to the Holland Tunnel

I absolutely loved heading over to WTC during lunch to browse the Border's Book Store

For some reason, I still carry a Hale and Hearty Soup frequent buyer card in my wallet, punched last on 9/7 at the kiosk that used to be in front of the Path

I was supposed to have a meeting the morning of 9/11 in AOL's lower Manhattan offices that was canceled the day before - I still keep the copy of my calendar from that week

We used to go for drinks in Moran's some times after work even though it had over priced drinks

My last time through (9/7) I was in a hurry and didn't stop by the Warner Brother's Store to pick my son up a stuffed Bugs Bunny; 5 years later I don't let time get in the way any more

My wife had a doctor's visit to determine whether she was pregnant (which she was); that still creeps me out when you hear about all of the people that didn't know they were pregnant that day and lost someone

My last normal time in NYC was watching the ladies US Open Final between the Williams sisters on 9/9; I haven't watched tennis live since then

It helped me to write down what little things changed that day so I could remember what it was like before 9/11

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. 2010 update. I think a lot of folks have wiped from their memory how horrific these attacks were. So I added this photo from my own personal collection of pictures. As you can read above, I worked right across the river and a week after the attacks I was down at Ground Zero while everything was still burning; 9 years later I can still see the flames, the smoke and remember the smell

So, we launched a new great political advertising tactic called a Google Mobile Surge and surprisingly when compared to its older brother a Google Surge, the Mobile Surge over delivered on my expectations. Now unlike my original post on a Google Surge, its a little too early to give away how to tips, but I thought it would great to give you a little background on how we came up with this political tactic....

A few months ago, my co-worker Ryan and I had a call with Apple to learn about their iAd platform and even though we have several clients that have enough budget to extend their advertising to mobile, Apple told us that unless we agreed to spend high 6 to 7 figures in a month they wouldn't give us even a presentation on the capabilities. (yes - Apple refused to hit the damn <send> button on an email. Dear Apple, I love your devices but your sales force is seriously short sighted)

In the meantime, I kept researching Google's capabilities in the mobile space and I worked on several projects for other clients; what I learned was that Google has $150K+ per day in App advertising and I've noticed that you can expect 10% of your search volume to be available on mobile phones.

Now, if you hadn't noticed, Google automatically opts your campaigns into All Devices; now this seems harmless enough because unless you make a WAP ad your ads will only show on high end devices which is a decent way to extend your reach (I monitor the results and if not meeting client goals I will opt out of mobile).

Next up came the Michele Bachmann Campaign which as a consultant I love working on. They came to us with a strategy of promoting their new Jim The Election Guy video which hammered her opponent for taxing beer and reminded people at the glorious Minnesota State Fair.

Coming up with a desktop surge was easy. Promoting the commercial to Minnesota fair ground people while they are waiting in line for the State Fair food was genius. As I said in the article, imagine standing in line for your beer and you pull out your iPhone to have this ad delivered into the palm of your hand. Pure evil genius...

And we way over delivered on YouTube views for the ad and without giving away metrics, the CTRs were FANTASTIC and the CPCs were outrageously competitive for something that was worth far more than the CPM bids.

Yes I wrote CPMs bids - contrary to popular belief you can sometimes get cheap CPCs and great reach for a CPM bid.

Finally, in politics, I think the volume right now is in the Apps and not in the mobile search; that's not to say you should ignore mobile search, just expect better reach on the App side for now

The campaign is happy. We are thrilled and we are generating some buzz. Remember, like its older brother, the Mobile Surge is not for the small budgeted advertiser..Oh and those iAds? I'll wait for Apple's sales call when they figure out that they missed out on advertising dollars from all the small/medium advertisers - especially political ad dollars this season.

A month or two back fellow Connell Donatelli employee Ryan Waite and I had a conference call with Apple to discuss their iAd platform. For you non-wireless advertiser that's Apples platform for placing their new rich media ads on iPad and iPhone devices. Anyway we have a few clients that could spend money so we thought let's chat.

Apple told us that unless we were going to spend high 5 figures into 6 in one month we couldn't even see a deck on the platform and then Apple told us to go to their lower end Quattro platform. I won't go into much detail what we are doing but let's just say Google has a good platform.

So I'm a little surprised Apple is no longer accepting orders in the early fall. Either they are ready to allow smaller advertisers in or they are letting other platforms take the business. Clearly Apple bought them as a defensive move but it is curious that they haven't announced how to support the non-super huge advertiser.

I was researching a mobile campaign for a new client. I can't go
into details, but let's say that Google Maps is an important application for them so I clicked on a text ad to get more details on Google Maps and I saw this chart which got me thinking. Why doesn't Google provide Business Reviews, Biking Directions, Latitude, Layers, My Maps, and Starred Items for iPhones yet provides them for Blackberrys, Nokia S60, and Windows devices? Is this chart a typo or is Google purposely trying to make iPhones look the worst of any devices when it comes to Google features?

Seriously, you don't have to look very hard to see that the iPhone appears to be the worst device on the chart. Is this what Apple vs Google has come down to? Google penalizing Apple device users yet supporting Windows based phones? I get saving special features for Android devices, but purposely penalizing a device that people love the most? This doesn't seem very Google like and it appears to be purposely evil....I hope/wish this chart just hasn't been updates because it seems quite sad....

Yes you've seen the ads already. Verizon's Rule The Air seems to be one of those advertising campaigns that is easily ignored and tries to make you think what that logo is. I think it will be gone within a year and it would have been sooner if Verizon wasn't a big slow moving telecommunications company. I worked at one for 10 years so I have an idea of how this works.

Big agency convinces the marketing communications director that Verizon needs a new ad campaign (which they don't). It might have even been after a review or new creative account. The agency puts together some concepts and then off to focus groups where junior marketing folks tally talking points and after 2 weeks the results come back in and this concept is the winner.

So it takes Verizon months to clean out collateral get service reps changed and then do the photo shoots and creative ads in place. Millions of dollars has been sunk into this. However at the end of the day, marketing is measured on sales, churn, and average revenue per minute. It will take a few months to get the data and make a decision but it will be the holidays and too late to switch it out.

Do customers want to rule the air waves? No. We want phones that work and data connections that are fast. I'm not trying to rule anything. Verizon still had the perfect ad campaign given AT&T's issue which is/was the " can you heat me now" campaign but the ad agency isn't paid to extend the life of that campaign but to come up with new ads.

I've seen this movie before - it was called AT&T 's the iPlan famous for AT&T employees saying "what the heck is that". (Seinfeld reference = the Show about nothing). The only thing that will save The Rule The Air campaign is a Verizon iPhone.

About a month back I outlined my wife's terrible experience with 1800Flowers. One of my comments I received was from a local florist who outlined the behind the scenes payment and delivery they received from 1900Flowers. Now I have no idea whether what she wrote was true or not, but I tend to believe her. So it got me thinking, what's a local florist supposed to do in order to avoid being a 1800Florist partner and fight them on their own.

Old School Facelift #11 What's A Local Florist Supposed to Do?

Look You Need a Decent Website - I'm not a huge fan in spending a ton of money on a website unless you are planning on taking online orders. If you do, then you need a good local website designer and programmer. If not, you need a good, cheap brochure like site that drives to a phone number. If that's your path you take, it is much more important for you to get a good URL that is search engine friendly, choose good titles, and write content carefully; all of these are critical in making sure your site is search engine friendly (ChesterNJFlorist.com) Your goal is to get listed very high in Google's organic search results for say "florist 07930" You need to out maneuver the giant advertisers by being smarter about your listings.

Capture Your Google Local Business Listing/Places Page - You know those great map listings that appear between the paid search ads at the top and the organic listings, make sure you edit your listing (for free or I can help you) because I've found that owner verified listings are placed ahead of the unverified listings. Upload photos, coupons, plus you can pay a flat amount per month to have your listing stand out from every one else. Finally, the Place listing comes back into play later on.

Updating Your Content - Again, I'm not a huge fan of building a blog right into the website, but if you can afford it, go for it. However, if not, make sure you go to Wordpress or Typepad to get a free or cheap blog; it will work just as well as long as you link back to your main website. You don't have to go crazy, but posting 1-2 times per week with pictures would be a good start. This keeps your site(s) fresh and makes the search engines visit your sites more often.

Facebook if You Can - Now I see tons of local businesses with their Facebook pages and this is a good start, but just having a page is only the first step. If you really want to make it work, you need to post regular updates because if you are an active Facebook user like myself, you will miss that once per month post and fade into obscurity. Infrequent posts on a Facebook page will only get you a word of mouth endorsement if one of your potential customers has a Facebook friend who also happens to be a fan of your page. Twitter is even more difficult because it offers you little to no utility from infrequent updates, I would however, update and capture your Yelp listing.

Google AdWords - You knew this was coming, however you have a leg up if you link your AdWords and Places account. By doing that you can enable local ad extensions so that when people are searching in your area for a florist, your text ad will show an address and phone number. You should keep your paid search campaign very tight and focus your campaigns in your geo target. Plus, you should geo your keywords (florist chester nj, florist 07930, etc) and put those words into regional geo targeted campaigns to get people who looking to send flowers to someone who is not in your immediate area (ex - sending flowers to a sick relative). Next, I'd DEFINITELY make sure you set up a separate mobile campaign to capture people on the go. Finally, if you can afford it, extend your Google campaign out to Bing-Yahoo because by the fall the merger will have gone through and you'll be able to capture an additional 30% of search volume.

Those are my quick tips to help the local florist. If you are smart and set this up properly, Google is the great marketing equalizer where a well organized highly relevant campaign can compete and win versus the much larger advertiser. Good luck,

I just finished taking the Search Advertising Advanced Exam for Google's Professional Certification Program and there were quite a number of questions on linking your Google AdWords accounts with your Google Places Account. (BTW if you are wondering, the exam is super hard but I did pass). So this got me thinking how important is Google Places?

Now, I've been keeping a close eye on the local marketing tactics available via Google Places. Not familiar with it? Basically as a small business owner you can customize the way your business appears in the local map results. This is super important because the odds are if you are a local business your website will most likely never get enough visits to warrant a high organic listing. However, if you customize your local business listing/Google Places page you can be high up when Google shows the map results ahead of the traditional organic listing.

Besides getting the high listing in maps, you get free traffic reports, ability to add coupons and events, and for a flat fee per month you can highlight your listings. However, the big kicker for me is when you link your AdWords account with your Places account. Now your text ads can show an address which makes it stand out from your competition.

I can only conclude based on the amount of questions regarding Google Places that it is a key component of Google's growth in the future. Sure the big ad agency is slowly embracing paid search, but if I had to guess, Google is really looking for a surge in accounts from the small business universe; hence the amount of questions that you needed to answer correctly in order to get your Advanced certification. Need some help with your small business account, let me know...

So back in winter I dropped my laptop and it chipped the outer shell and caused some cosmetic piece to pop off. The laptop turned out to be fine, but I called into HP Customer Service because I had the extended warranty only to discover accidents weren't covered but they could fix it for $298. However, since I decided to order the iPad when it was available I thought $298 and the loss of my laptop for up to 7 business days wasn't worth it.

Fast forward to yesterday and my "N" key popped off. I tried popping it back on but it didn't work. The Control button also popped off a few months ago but I didn't use it so I didn't care, but the N key is a big deal. So I went over to HP support which is always such a "treat" and couldn't find any documentation on how to fix it so I contacted support. In a nut shell, they would replace the keys for free, but if they found it was due to an accident they would charge me $298 but in either case I'd be without my laptop for 7 business days. So I started to think, hmmmm, cracked shell with a chip missing, what are the odds they are going to try and charge me $298 for a repair? If their customer service/repairs department is a profit making unit, pretty good, right?

So I googled "replace key on hp pavilion laptop" and right at the top I found this article on how to replace keys on a HP Pavilion DV1000 which was close enough to my current laptop model. In about 2 minutes I had the key replaced and therefore didn't need the service. In fact, the entire online chat with HP's rep took almost 45 minutes to setup the process - too long and too tedious.

So this got me thinking. How damn hard would it be to put that documentation on HP's website? How many people have shipped their laptop back for something that took about 2 minutes to fix? Besides the chat and losing my laptop for 7 business days, I'd have to remove all passwords and backup all of my files - all for a damn key.

You know what I learned from all of this? Extended warranties are crap. HP customer service (not the rep) was crap - I get trying to upsell clients but for a damn process that took 2 minutes to fix you couldn't put that on your website? In this area of transparency, crowd sourcing, and instant satisfaction via web search, couldn't HP do a better job of trying to put easy fixes out there especially for us suckers that bought the extended warranty? I don't think extended warranties are worth it and perhaps all of the money I pay for a Windows - HP laptop isn't worth it anymore either...

Yesterday evening while waiting for my grill to heat up, I turned on my SkyGrid app on my iPad. The number one most talked about story was about the FCC reviewing the wireless industry practice (or lack of) on cell phone bill shock. You know the shock you get from a big bill when you aren't paying attention to your wireless usage especially when you are traveling internationally.

Now, I already had my own bill shock surprise not when travelling overseas but just using my wireless phone.You see when I first signed up for AT&T I didn't get an unlimited voice plan, but now I
love my iPhone so much that I started using it for all of my calls. My wife pays the bills and didn't pay much attention to a $500 bill, but when it hit $1,000 I called into AT&T. They were great and credited my bill basically the full amount over the two months minus the cost of an unlimited plan. Also, when I do travel overseas I get the international wireless data plan, but even that is just good for email - you open up an app and wham - you download a ton of data.

Anyway, I didn't pay much attention to the articles because I've had my personal experiences and I can see the bill shock problem for customers and even though I'm an ex-AT&T guy, I actually agree with the consumer. My own experience with AT&T was great, but then again with a little advanced warning I might have caught it early. Well today, I received this email from AT&T regarding Travel Tip for Your iPhone which I found the timing very interesting.

Is this just a standard email sent out by AT&T? Perhaps, but then again I think they know this is my second iPhone. However, even if this was already a planned email, did AT&T notice the buzz yesterday and decided to be proactive and send out this email?

I think the answer is Yes. I have to believe AT&T has buzz monitoring services and someone at AT&T must have had their own SkyGrid type report and decided this email should be sent out on the heels of the big news story. I think this was very smart political rapid response which is something I know a thing or two about. I think they would have been perfect, if they were running some paid search ads or had some sort of website devoted to tips for fighting bill shock, but the timing on the email was beautiful. Nicely done.

Some of you readers are probably thinking, oh here we go again. You are probably expecting a big rant from me based on the title of this post, but I think you might be a little disappointed. However, I am fired up enough to rant a little about the problems we've been experiencing at 1-800-FLOWERS.

It started about a month back when my wife ordered an exotic bouquet from 1800-FLOWERS.COM
for one of my relatives in the hospital. We put the order through my iPad, our credit card was charged, and we got a confirmation. Unfortunately the flowers were never delivered. So my wife called into their customer service number when we heard from my relative that she hadn't received them. Let that set in for a second, we got charged on our credit card and if we didn't check with my relative we probably never would have known they weren't delivered. Anyway, the customer service rep was very professional, credited our account, and we received a letter with a 20% off coupon.

So, we just assumed this was a glitch and placed an order last week for another relative using the 20% off coupon, Our credit card was charged for a simple flower bouquet with balloons and once again 1-800-FLOWERS failed to deliver. So my wife called in again and this time was quite upset. 1-800-FLOWERS tried to contact the local florist but failed so 1-800-FLOWERS credited our account again (as of this post we haven't confirmed the credit but we are not worried).

That was the last time we will order flowers from 1-800-FLOWERS. Their customer service reps are extremely professional and very nice, but based on our recent experiences I think there is something wrong in their order fulfillment process. It just seems too odd that two consecutive orders from us would fail in similar ways.

I don't think 1-800-FLOWERS is a bad company, just we've had 2 bad recent experiences with their order fulfillment and that usually means to me, that they are cutting some corners that they probably shouldn't be. Have you experienced similar problems or are we just a little unlucky? I'd like to know.

I love you. You know how much I do. I spend countless hours in AdWords for both desktop and mobile campaigns. I also religiously use Reader, Gmail, Docs, AdPlanner, Google Places - the list goes on and on. However, I'd really like you to fix these pet peeves on mine - some are easy while one requires some work.

1) Please, please make Quality Score a default setting in AdWords. Do you have any idea how many times I have to customize my keywords view to add Quality Score? A ton. Now any real student of paid search will profess how important Quality Score is so why not make it a default setting? Yeah I get it that a small percentage of users actually add it to their views, but maybe that's because they have to know to add it.

2) Make an iPad version of AdWords Editor (this is the hard one). Look you have to know by now that the iPad is really a mini computer, so why default users to your stripped down, kinda lame AdWords reporting interface? Why not make an AdWords app? I get you are in this battle with Apple but really this just hurts your users.

3) Writing about AdWords Editor why not add the ability to download ads made with your Google Ad Builder tool? Yeah I get that the ads are perhaps proprietary to you and perhaps you don't want users to get access to the Flash code, but cut us a break. These ads are pretty cheesy so I wouldn't worry so much about people copy and pasting them onto their desktop or perhaps you can use some of those engineers to figure out a way to prevent the code from being downloaded.

4) Finally, give me the ability to download click to play video ads into AdWords Editor. You know you want advertisers using it so why not make it easy for us to copy and paste it into other ad groups?

Thanks Google for listening. I hope you make these changes. PardonMyFrench,

Stuff

Search

Copyright 2005-09 by Eric Frenchman LLC. All content on Pardonmyfrench.net, pardonmyfrench.typepad.com and EricFrenchman.com, including text, graphics, logos, and images, and the selection and arrangement thereof, is the exclusive property of Eric Frenchman LLC or its licensors and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. All trademarks appearing on Pardonmyfrench.net, pardonmyfrench.typed.com, and ericfrenchman.com are the property of their respective owners. All articles posted are intended for the personal, non-commercial use of Pardonmyfrench.net, pardonmyfrench.typed.com, and ericfrenchman.com visitors, provided, however, that all copyright and other proprietary notices displayed with such articles are fully retained. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.